Donate

Donate

• Support a child’s special education @ 1500/- per month
• Fund the transport of a child @ Rs 800 / - per month
• Sponsor nutrition of a child (Breakfast & Lunch) @  Rs 500 / - per month and an adult @700/- per month
• Be a benefactor of the child’s speech, physiotherapy or occupational therapy, each @ Rs 1250 / - per month
• Counseling for family @ Rs 500 / - per month
• Aid the IQ assessment programme for a child @ Rs 100/- per month
• Provide for the special medicines  for a child @ Rs.800/- to Rs.1000/-pm
• Sponsor breakfast for a day for 40 children – Rs. 1500/-
• Sponsor regular lunch for a day for 40 children – Rs.  1600/-
• Sponsor special lunch for a day for 40 children – Rs. 2400/-
• Invest in the future of a child and earn immeasurable happiness and contentment…take your step TODAY!

Volunteers

Volunteers

Part time - Administration Full time - Child-related activities Organizing events. Public Relation Brand Ambassador Mentoring Sourcing material for products 19 volunteers signed up for doing volunteer work at Shristi. Of these, Anil Kumar, Neha Toshniwal, Deepak MVS and Mohana were regular. They assisted in teaching children functional academics, music and games and helped in various administrative jobs. Apart from these we had scores of volunteers who signed up from MNC”S like Cisco Systems, Progeon, Sapient, P, Accenture etc. They visited the campus on event days and working Saturdays and spent time in entertaining the children, painting the campus, taking children for picnics, making teaching aids and in tutoring students. The Volunteer Mentors dedicated their time to building awareness about the activities of Shristi, in getting more volunteers to sign up and in getting child sponsors for nutrition, medication and therapy. They also contributed ideas and their time for training staff.

 

Counselling

As part of the rehabilitation programme, regular counseling and guidance sessions were held for the children and their parents. Through these sessions, parents are supported and empowered in dealing with various problems which hinder the normal functioning of the family. Directors, Psychologist, Medical Social worker and administrators are actively involved in the process. Home visits and Home Based Programmes Home visits are an integral part of the Rehabilitation process. It helps in understanding the client's home environment,collateral contacts of the client and to study the Psycho-Social and Economic status of children. Shristi's Medical Social Worker visited many of the children's homes and documented the reports of these visits. Home-based programmes are provided to help parents who cannot send their children with disabilities to dcm school regularly due to location or other factors. During these programmes, the parents are trained in various skills so as to carry out the same at home. Parents, of children with different problems like Autism, Mental Retardation, Cerebral Palsy, and Speech Delay attended this programme. Activities carried out and the interventions programmes undertaken for each child were Intake Assessment Psychotherapy Physiotherapy Occupational Therapy Counseling Speech Therapy One of the major achievements of this academic year was the initiation of ongoing Parent Training Programmes which were comprehensive and need based.Parent Orientation programme cum get-together for parents was followed by a Graduation Ceremony .many Parents attended the programme.  Parents Training Programme on Adolescent Behaviour was conducted . Parent Skill Building Training (for parents of children in Early Intervention, Primary and Respite Care programmes) was conducted It was on 'Activities of Daily Living' and it was followed by a Parent Training Questionnaire to assess needs. Counselling Services Comprehensive screening and assessment of children with specific learning disabilities and other developmental disabilities. Counselling in specific areas for children and adolescents Parental guidance and counseling for better child management at home Support services and counseling to families with children with medical problems. Assisting other NGOs and networking for the welfare of children Organizing and conducting seminars and workshops Propagating and creating awareness on disability related issues Training programmes for schools on identifying and working with children with problems Publishing a newsletter to promote awareness about special education Opportunities are being provided for children to learn music, dance, and swimming thereby helping them to acquire recreation and leisure skills

Special Services

Special Services

Comprehensive screening and assessment of children with specific learning disabilities and other developmental disabilities. Counselling in specific areas for children and adolescents Parental guidance and counseling for better child management at home Support services and counseling to families with children with medical problems Assisting other NGOs and networking for the welfare of children Organizing and conducting seminars and workshops Propagating and creating awareness on disability related issues.

Training programmes for schools on identifying and working with children with problems Publishing a newsletter to promote awareness about special education Opportunities are being provided for children to learn music, dance, and swimming thereby helping them to acquire recreation and leisure skills.

services

SERVICES - mandatory to all children as a part of the scientifically designed individualized educational programme

• Multi-disciplinary assessment
• Individualized educational plan
• Speech therapy
• Psychological Services
• Physiotherapy
• Occupational Therapy
• Social Work Services
• Counselling Services
• Recreation
• Mobility Services
• Assistive devices
• Vocational Training
• On the job training
• Functional Academics

The services offered include:

Habilitation services	Therapeutic Intervention, Multi-Sensory Stimulation, Language Stimulation, Family Counseling, psychotherapy, Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Experiential Cognitive Learning
Resource materials	Teaching aids Equipment, Stationery-paints/ crayons/ toys/ games/ story books/activity books/ log books, recording sheets, Audio-visual aids etc.,
Transport facility	Transport facility provided to pick and drop children from their home, Outings-field trips and Sales
Medical facility	Medicines, Medical screening/ investigations, Any other specialist treatment etc.,
Nutritional supplement	Lunch, milk, fruits, snacks, juice, other complementary nutritional supplement- need based etc.,

 

dcm school

Ones, one of my neighbour aunt give birth to boy child. Everyone was very happy. But after some years we come to know that, the boy is mentally retarded. He is slow Lerner or in normal term Abnormal. Then suddenly, the attitude of looking at that boy of his relatives changed. They started hating him and treat very badly. That aunty was also gets frustrated. Than that aunt took him in slow learner’s school and after that, boy become confident enough to survive with the help of his mother.
We saw many cases like this around us. Many people treat Mentally Retarded or slow learner children as ‘fools’. But it’s very cruel thing. They are also like normal people only. They just mentally grow slowly. In this case we should help them & shouldn’t tease. There is less awareness about these children and their problems. Many Institutes and organisations work for these children’s. One of them is (NEWLIGHTCHARITABLETRUST )DIVINE CROSS MISSION SPECIAL SCHOOL FOR MENTALLY RETARDED
NEWLIGHT Charitable Trust has been running Divine cross mission special school for mentally retarded Centre since 2000 for the mentally retarded children in NEYVELI. "There is no cure for mental retardation. But if neglected it creates a number of problems to the children and their families." NEWLIGHT Charitable Trust, keeping this in mind, started a centre where these children could be trained to make them self-sufficient. At present there are 45 children in the age group of 8-28 years. To train these children they have 2 SPECIAL EDUCATOR QUALIFIED teachers who are doing this noble job. . The trustees and the staff put in their best effort to bring all round development of the children so that they can join to the main stream of the society.
Besides teaching daily activities in life, the centre imparts special training in dance, music, drama, yoga and sport. These children have got many prizes in this also. The children are made self sufficient by teaching them the salable items like Greeting cards, Seasonal items like Rakhees, Envelope, Cotton flowers (Organdi),meadical cover, Garlands of plastic flowers, many types of chatanies and much more things and the best thing is that, they sale this product and also get money for their work from institute.

fine motor skill

WHAT IS PRACTICAL LIFE?

The pictures below are of Practical Life activities taken from a Montessori school.  Practical Life exercises are highly valued in the Montessori method due to the importance that they have in teaching children useful life skills.  Practical Life activities also have a strong fine motor component and so are valuable in developing and extending children's fine motor abilities as well as their cognitive development.

Before a child begins using a practical life activity, he or she receives a demonstration on the correct use of it.  This is for every activity that the child wishes to try.  The teacher demonstrates how to carry the tray or basket to the table correctly, how to safely and correctly use the materials, how to clean up and order the activity when it is finished, and then how to place the tray or basket back on the shelf correctly.

In the Montessori method, demonstration by the teacher is very important to ensure correct and responsible use of the activities, especially where glass jugs and such are used.  If children are using materials incorrectly or irresponsibly, the teacher will again go through a demonstration with the child.  If the child persists with negative behavior, they are aware that they will lose their privilege to engage with these activities.  It is expected that all materials are used safely and are returned in a neat state to the shelves.  It is these expectations along with the activities that develop life skills such as responsibility and self discipline.  Thanks to Leanne Pinel for allowing me to include these activities

Polishing Skills

The children are given small spray bottles with a small amount of oil (for wood and silver) or water with a small amount of windex.  Children are shown how to spray appropriate amounts on the object and then how to polish with a cloth using circular motions

Small Muscle Activities.

These activities require a lot of use of the fingers and small muscles of the hand.  The activities pictured are padlocks with keys, nuts and bolts, boxes with lids, jars with screw top lids, different types of door locks, and bolts to remove with a tool.

Pouring Liquids

These activities involve pouring liquids from one container into another.  You can see that each tray has a small sponge for spillages.

Extension of Pouring Liquids

In these activities the child pours liquids from one container to another but also pours through something.  In the top tray, the child pours through a funnel, and in the bottom tray the child pours through a strainer.

Spooning

The child uses a spoon to move the beans from one bowl to another.

Pouring Solids

This requires an adjustment from pouring solids seeing as the solids (beans) move differently from container to container.

Life Skills

These trays are designed to develop skills that children can use in their homes and everyday lives - folding and unfolding socks, folding napkins, and setting the table.  Note that lines were stitched into the napkins so that the child would know where to fold them so some napkins were folded in half to form a rectangle, and some diagonally to form a triangle.  A small shoe was also provided in this area to allow for practise with tying shoe laces.

Pincer Grip Activities

These activities develop control over the pincer grip.  You can see that there is a graduation in the level of skill required - first using large tongs to transfer pompoms to a bowl, next using sugar cube tongs to transfer beads between bowls, and then using tweezers to transfer small flat shapes to a bowl.

Extension of Pincer Grip Activities

Here the child uses a large syringe to transfer liquid between containers.  This again requires control over the pincer grip in order to be able to collect the liquid into the syringe and then place it in the other bowl

Extension #2 of Pincer Grip Activities

In this activity the child moves to using a small syringe to transfer the liquids

Extension of Spooning Skills

In this activity the child uses a small spoon and places one marble in each section of the ice cube tray.

Clothing Skills

These are wooden frames with different types of materials nailed on.  Each frame has a different type of object that the child needs to use.  The frames have the following objects for children to manipulate - buckles, buttons, zipper, safety pins, studs, and laces.  Each frame encourages the child to work on using objects that are regularly found on clothing, thereby developing their dressing skills.

mid day meal

first sign-autism

Our Mission

First Signs is dedicated to educating parents and professionals about autism and related disorders

With developmental, behavioral, and learning disabilities on the rise, there is much that remains poorly understood, from cause to cure. However, there is one widely-accepted fact: early and intensive intervention can have a profound impact on the quality of life for children at risk and their families.

Speech-Language Pathology

The foundation for communication begins long before a child can speak. Heartspring speech-language pathologists are skilled in working with children of all ages including infants with problems in feeding.  Speech-language pathologists are trained to work with non-verbal children using sign language and augmentative communication devices as well as developing custom communication systems as needed.  They also serve children who are verbal but have delayed speech and or language development.  Research shows when diagnosis and treatment occurs early, children have better outcomes and greater success.
Speech-language pathologists at Heartspring have experience and training in the following areas:

• Autism Spectrum Disorders
• Alternative Augmentative Communication
• Feeding Difficulties
• Hearing Impairments
• Cleft Palate
• Oral Motor Deficits
• Fluency/Stuttering
• Auditory Processing
• Expressive and Receptive Language Disorders
• Articulation Disorders

AUDITORY PROCESSING DISORDER

An Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) refers to deficits in the recognition and interpretation of sounds that may be associated with conditions such as Dyslexia and Attention Deficit Disorder. Children with APD often do not recognize subtle differences between the sounds in words and exhibit poor listening skills, language difficulties, and deficits in attention. APD is a receptive language disorder. It refers to difficulties in the decoding and storing of auditory information (typically incoming verbal messages). Children who have auditory processing problems are a heterogeneous group of people who have difficulty using auditory information to communicate and learn. This involves a set of problems that occur with different listening tasks.

Speech and Language Support
Efficient auditory processing is the foundation for oral communication.
The five primary components of auditory processing are:

1) Retention and Organization: This component involves the ability to listen to something, remember it, and repeat it in the original order. Difficulties in this area limit a person’s ability to follow directions, to remember information, and to retell or describe events. People with deficit retention and organization skills often have trouble in completing tasks at home, in school, or at work.
2) Auditory Discrimination: This component enables the listener to differentiate among auditory signals. On an advanced level, auditory discrimination helps a person hear differences among speech patterns in conversation as well as in pitch changes. Poor discrimination is apparent when a person misunderstands what he hears, confuses one word for another, misarticulates various sounds in his own speech, or experiences difficulty in learning to read.
3) Sequencing; This component is directly related to the ability to follow directions. Since most of us, especially students, spend a great deal of our day following directions in school or at work, disturbances in this are usually fairly obvious. Inattentiveness, incomplete paperwork, and learning difficulties may be directly related to poor sequencing skills.
4) Conceptualization: Conceptualizing auditory messages enables the listener to give meaning to what he hears. Effective conceptualization is crucial to abstract concepts such as time, direction and space. Disturbances in this area can create the impression that a student is disorganized and unable to adapt to new situations. Such a student is apt to be considered inflexible, concrete, and confused.
5) Synthesis of Information: This auditory processing component is fundamental for
pulling together all the language skills that are necessary to communicate effectively.
These skills include the ability to learn to read, to anticipate spoken messages, to grasp
the main idea of a conversation or story, and to fill in missing information in a
conversation.

Information for Teachers, Counselors, and Parents by Joan Altimore, Central Bucks (PA) School District, 9/2001